September 22 - Belmont Park

BEL Race 3
... $50 Win 1,2

BEL Race 4
... $50 Win 7,3

BEL Race 5
... $50 Win 8,10

BEL Race 8
... $50 Win 5,6

BEL Race 9
... $65 Win 10
... $35 Win 7

Way to go Ted!

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Thanks Bud. I don't understand the mutuels at Belmont this week!

Ted

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Ted great job,in race 4 at bel 9-22 you put the 6 into the secondary contender list even though he was #1 BL BL,could you explain your reasoning why,I am new and trying learn something.

Thanks
Cody

Cody,

My (almost unwavering) process, after determining which races I want to or need to work, is: use the paceline Selection Strategy tool (Best of Last 3 Perceptor, Comparable distance/surface) to get initial line selections and a BL/BL ranking. This initial process produced the following initial BL/BL set:

Attachment 30499

Now I pare this down to 5 (preferrably) horses who are true Contenders. With the new Grouping facility in RDSS2, I try to leave horses in the Primary (upper) group which I think can actually Win the race. I try to group horses who might finish in the money into the Secondary group, and (sometimes, though I get lazy) mark those I judge have NO CHANCE as Non-Contenders.

In this race, I eliminated the bottom 3 horses from Primary, grouping them as Secondary. This leaves me my normal 5 Primary Contenders:

Attachment 30502

Before eliminating ANYBODY as a Win Contender, I reviewed every horse to see if I agreed with the software's assessment of a line representing what the horse may do today. I chose to switch lines for the #3 horse from 2nd to 1st line even though it was a worse Perceptor #, because - a) doing so did not change it's BL/BL ranking (4th), it was a more recent effort, c) the E/L distribution appeared more in line with the majority of its Turf route efforts (i.e. rather later than the 2nd line).

Then I re-reviewed the remaining 5 Primary Contenders to be sure I still though each one could actually win, and compared to the remaining Primaries. The critical horse was, as your question pertains to - the #6 horse rated on Top. So, he had better be True Contender.

Attachment 30501

Compared to the other 4 Primaries, I judged that this horse was least likely to Win, given so many of its recent not-quite-there performances. My eye drifts to the lack of colour - please see the PPs for the rest of the horses in the following post and compare the others to see how much more colour there is in all of their Stretch and Final Call positions.

I believe it is important to not engage in too many subjective judgements about a horse's energy disbursement ability based on how he ran in visually apparently mediocre performances, thus I try to look closely at every horse with an apparently top Total Energy (and commensurately other top) ratings. Besides no recent colour for the #6 (not closing sufficiently to get the Win job done), I note that his apparent Top Total Energy is largely attributable to the Pace of the Race, i.e. the horse(s) who set the pace in its 2nd and 4th lines, which the #6 ran against but did not produce himself. You could say that the Top Total Energy figure for the #6 belonged not to him, but to the race pace-setter(s) - and they're not running today!

To cross-check for circumstances like this (i.e. potentially deceptively high Total Energy for a horse who, compared to the other Contenders, appears to be less able to actually Win or finish closely), I check the Pace of Race Total Energy (the column next to the Pace of Horse Total Energy on the Original screen, and on the Pace of Race Velocity screen). Here, the PoR was approximately equal to the PoH velocities for both the 2nd and 4th lines of the #6, which indicated to me that the horse's apparent strong energy (relative to the other Contenders) actually belonged to the Pace of Race, and not to him. Thus, I felt good about 'calling a spade a spade' regarding his apparent lack of visual closing ability. Thus he became a Secondary Contender - a potential in-the-money horse, but not a Win Contender.

And thus, the winning #7 became my top horse. Note that even if I had not eliminated the #6, at the final odds the #7 (still in 3rd tier BL/BL) would have been one of my 2 win bets. For the Contest, I had to pick Win bets based on Morning Line.

I hope that answers your question about my thought process regarding classifying the #6 as a not-for-Win contender. Although the foregoing may have been a lengthy response, my recollection is that the actual analysis took about 3 minutes or so, so it gets easier the more scenarios your work, I find.

I am adding the rest of the Primary Contenders' PPs in the next post.

Ted

PPs for remaining Primary Contenders.

Attachment 30504

Attachment 30505

As noted in the previous post, all pacelines were selected by the software except for the #3. I chose to switch lines for the #3 horse from 2nd to 1st line even though it was a worse Perceptor #, because - a) doing so did not change it's BL/BL ranking (4th), it was a more recent effort, c) the E/L distribution appeared more in line with the majority of its Turf route efforts (i.e. rather later than the 2nd line). It would not have made any difference to either the analysis or the outcome in this race had I made no change. But it is important to perform such a review, IMO - and to apply your own judgements consistently (because the software is absolutely consistent, even when it's wrong).

Attachment 30506
Attachment 30508

Attachment 30507

Thanks Ted you just you just helped me greatley,and thanks for taking the time to explain it step by step.

Thanks
Cody